


to romance that might have been

by Anonymous



Category: Rocketman (2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Crossdressing, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: I'm dreadfully bored of every single person that isn’t you, Elton says.





	to romance that might have been

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the characters/events in Rocketman, and not the real life people they depict!

Come round to my place, Elton says on the phone, with a pleading to his voice that Bernie hasn’t ever learned to deny.

We could just listen to records, Elton says. There’s an indistinct ruckus in the background; a party. Always a party.

I'm dreadfully bored of every single person that isn’t you, Elton says. 

Please, Elton says. Quietest of all. 

***

Of course he goes. Of course he swaps out pyjama bottoms for blue jeans. Of course he drives the familiar winding miles.

And, of course, he beats Elton home by a long shot. (“If you have enough money,” Elton had said once, more observational than pompous, “time tends to bend to _you._ ”) Bernie’s got his own key - changed hands over breakfast, the morning after he’d signed the papers, casual, unacknowledged - so he lets himself in, sighs around the two separate sitting rooms, makes himself a drink. Waits longer. Makes a second. A third.

He hears Elton before he sees him, clomping ungracefully up the drive, calling something loud and playful to his driver, then jiggling the doorknob and murmuring _shit shit shit_ as if he’d forgotten it’d be locked. Bernie thinks about leaving him outside, as a pointed reprehension, but he doesn’t. 

Of course he doesn’t. 

He pulls the front door open—and freezes. 

Because it’s not Elton. 

Only—

Only it _is_ Elton, same soft eyes, same coy smile. but somehow he’s got long wavy hair, pooling over his shoulders. He’s got thick eyelashes and deep red lips. He’s got a slinky black dress that hugs his body in flattering places and - most bewildering of all - he’s got. Breasts. Good ones. Realistic ones. Large ones, straining against the material. 

“What are you—?“ Bernie says, all he can come up with, and Elton laughs breathlessly at his reaction. 

“The call girl you ordered, Mr. Taupin,” Elton says, honey-voiced and flirty. He laughs again when Bernie blanks. “God, Bernie, relax. Don’t act like you’ve never seen a man in drag.”

Has he? He thinks so, being friends with Elton, but before now, the idea had been - cartoonish. Funny. A gag his childhood mates might’ve played to draw in a cheap laugh. 

This was not that.

Bernie still hasn’t said anything. Elton rolls his eyes. “You going to let me into my own house, or shall I come back again tomorrow?”

He steps out of the way to let Elton through. Elton’s a little drunk, he can tell, a little unsteady - or that might’ve been the heels.

“It was George’s birthday,” Elton explains, as if Bernie had asked. “But Billie had the idea to surprise him. I might’ve gone a little overboard, but—“ he runs his hands along his hips, smoothes out an imaginary wrinkle, “—surprisingly not bad, right?”

“Yeah,” Bernie says, at last. At last. “Not bad.”

Elton graces him with a grin. “You think black might be my colour?”

An inexplicable warmth crawls up Bernie’s neck. He hopes to god Elton doesn’t notice. He’s no idea what’s going on. “It’s good,” he says, after too long a pause. 

“Right,” Elton murmurs, then nods towards the stairs. “You’ve got a drink, great. I’ve been hoping you’d play catch up. I'll just go change - won’t be more than a minute—“

Bernie’s hand, acting without his brain’s consent, reaches out and snags Elton’s wrist before he can go. They both seem surprised by the gesture. “You don’t have to,” he says. hardly aware that he’s saying it. The liquor is fogging his mind. That’s got to be the whole of it. “If you—don’t want to.”

Elton looks at him strangely. Neither of them move. 

“I don’t have to?”

“Just. If you don’t want to.”

Bernie’s eyes flicker down, briefly, so brief, and then away. At Elton’s face, questioning and curious. At the wall. 

“Alright,” Elton says, after another hesitation. “Then I don’t think I will.”

He lets go of Elton’s wrist. He finishes his drink in two long pulls. Elton tucks his long hair behind his ear and says, “One more, I think, for each of us?” and starts off for the kitchen without waiting for Bernie’s assent. The dress cuts off just above his knees and it’s odd, because they’re Elton’s legs, the same legs he’d seen a thousand times, but they look—noticeably feminine, right now. Tanned and smooth; Elton really had gone all-out.

“Rude to stare, Bernie,” Elton says, without even turning around, and Bernie feels distinctly caught. 

He comes back a few minutes later with two cups. Hands one to Bernie. Their fingers brush. Coming here was, perhaps, a mistake. 

“I’ll bring you next time,” Elton says, voice still low; Bernie’s more than aware than he’s done nearly all the talking. “If I’d have known—”

Elton’s face is kind, not challenging.

It still—

It doesn’t—

“No,” Bernie says, and watches the ice cubes bob around in his drink. “It’s not like that.”

“How’s it like, then?” Elton asks quietly.

A slight chill runs down Bernie’s spine. He's never met anyone like Elton. Never connected with anyone like Elton. _If you were a girl—_ he'd said once, high and loose. Elton hadn't laughed. Neither of them are laughing. He should stop drinking. He doesn’t stop drinking.

“C’mon,” he says. Evades the question, fuzzy-brained. “Put on a record. Let’s just...”

Elton watches him a moment longer, and nods, but he dims the overhead lights before heading towards his collection, throwing everything into a soft velvet hue. He’s swaying his hips, Bernie thinks, or else he’s just imagining it, and it’s eerie how it feels like he could be - somewhere else.

Bernie fumbles his way over to the sofa. Plops down, knees weak. Elton puts on a Simon & Garfunkel album, rich and familiar, then joins Bernie on a cushion. Sits close, close enough for their elbows to touch. His dress rides up a little, drawn tight around his thighs. Bernie doesn’t mean to look, but he does. The music is quiet. He can hear Elton swallow.

“Kind of fun,” Elton says carefully. “Being a girl.”

The ice in Bernie’s glass is trembling. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Sort of freeing.” Stilted silence; both of them unsure. Elton slips a finger under his dress strap. “And these - you’d think they were the real thing.” A pause. “Here. Feel.”

He’s got Bernie’s fingers in his grip before Bernie’s sure what’s happening; a second later, Bernie’s hand curving over Elton’s dress. They really do feel—real. Like a woman’s. He’s not sure if he’s meant to laugh or compliment them. His mouth’s gone starkly dry.

“That’s—” Bernie starts, stops short. Tries again, feeling like he must be short-circuiting. “Those are—”

Elton smiles. “Shouldn’t throw them out, then?”

“No.” His cheeks are burning-hot and he’s glad, so glad, that Elton had turned down the lights. “No, maybe not.”

“Bernie,” Elton breathes, “are you—”

“I dunno,” Bernie says, heart pounding, before he’s even finished the question. It could’ve gone a dozen different directions, but Bernie doesn’t think he can answer to any of them. He’s overheated. He’s drunk. Elton even _smells_ like a girl, something pleasant and floral, and there’s a smudge of eyeliner at the corner of his eye. Bernie lifts his hand, rubs gently at it with his thumb. Elton watches, stock-still, transfixed. His pupils are wide and glassed over and Bernie’s hit with the sudden realization that he might not’ve stepped away just to refill their drinks. Somehow that makes it—easier. They’re both fucked up. This is fucked up. This is Elton. This is not Elton.

“Should I—” Elton asks, voice just above a whisper. Simon & Garfunkel in the background, _half of the time we're gone but we don't know where_ , a song they both wished they’d written, and Elton shifts closer, palms almost desperately at Bernie’s sleeve. “Should I blow you, Bernie? I—just a blowjob from a girl, hmm? You—you met a random girl at a party and she—”

“Yeah,” Bernie gasps out, and Elton’s hands are already grappling at his fly.

The zipper dragged out of the way; he lifts his hips, just enough, to get his jeans shoved down, and then Elton’s—she’s—on the floor, between Bernie’s legs, a hand wrapped around him, rougher than he’s used to, but he has no trouble getting hard, and long hair tickling his thighs, red lips sliding over him, so unbelievably good, and she—Elton—clutches painted fingernails against Bernie’s shirt, swallows him down with ease, warm and practiced, and Bernie accidentally jerks forward, a little, and almost goes to apologize, but she hums encouragingly around him and the sorry dies in his throat. _I'm dreadfully bored of every single person that isn’t you_ , Elton had said. Every single person. That isn’t you. Bernie chokes out a moan and sifts his fingers through her hair and warns her when he’s about to come, but she doesn’t pull off, and that’s—that’s what does it for him, shuddering through it, almost dizzy with release.

Elton climbs back up beside him, after. Bernie tucks himself back in, doesn’t look at Elton’s smudged lipstick, the dress strap falling off his shoulder.

This is the part where he’d offer to reciprocate, at a party. With a girl.

Elton’s adjusting himself in the dress. Trying to be discreet.

“I—” Bernie says, but Elton looks at him and smiles, sort of sadly, like he already knows what he isn’t able to say.

“Don’t worry about it,” Elton says. “It’s good. We’re good. Right?”

His limbs feel heavy, his mind still racing. “Good,” he confirms; the relief on Elton’s face is how he knows it maybe could be true. The song changes over, _bye bye love, bye bye happiness_ , a cover—not his favorite, and Bernie reaches for his glass. The ice has melted, by now, but he drinks deeply: Elton watches him, silent, and lays a repentant hand against his knee.

***

Elton doesn’t call for the next two weeks. The morning after, Bernie had slipped out long before the sun had fully risen, the house large and still and silent around him, had driven back to his place with his hands clenched tight against the wheel, had stood in a scalding hot shower and scrubbed makeup off his hips. And then nothing. For two whole weeks. His fingers itch, a few times, but he never picks up the phone.

When he finally does ring, at some ungodly late hour, Bernie closes his eyes and presses his cheek against the receiver, doesn’t know where to start.

Come round to my place, Elton says. Uncertain. No pleading. It's quiet in the background. Just Elton's slow, measured breaths.

If you want, Elton says.

Either way, Elton says. 

Bernie, of course, knows what he means.


End file.
